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Friday, 14 March 2014

Assassin's Creed is not what it used to
be. Yes it has the climbing and the hiding and the jumping off of
rooftops to stab up to two people through the skull for the crime of
guarding a collectible that you desperately want for reasons that you
forgot many hours ago when you took on the task of opening every
single frivolous chest of pocket change across the ancient land. But
now it has new things added to this tried and tested and then
rehashed formula. It's got boats now. Big old pirate boats where your
collection of merry buccaneering NPCs sing shanties that you've
collected as part of a further collectible gathering ritual and
presumably bought back to the ship to teach the men to chant to speed
along the journeys ahead. Journeys that will be fast travelled as
soon as the option presents itself.

You may remember there being boats in
Assassin's Creed 3. They were a small part of that game that was more
of a small aside, and an optional one at that, an activity that the
game barely seemed to care that you even play. But then people played
it and realised that for all intents and purposes it was basically
the only shining part in that shit heap of a finale and so the next
game became all about boats.